Digital Wire: Digital business, digital transformation, APIs, AI and payments

Apple's new Siri, which was just released in iOS 27 and other Apple operating systems, is finally good. My first impressions at least indicate that the LLM (a Google derivative) is now much better at understanding what I mean, and using it feels a bit more like GrokBot or ChatGPT on my phone without the hassle of "onboarding" service providers (Email, Calendar, etc.) because it uses the iPhone’s existing provisioned routes. That’s convenient. But it’s also that convenience that is not compatible with the DMA. If you live in the EU (the European Union), you will not get the new Siri or have access to it because Apple and the European Commission can't agree on terms for the rollout under the Digital Markets Act. Under the DMA, such functionality—accessing the iPhone’s functionality the way the new Siri can—should be made accessible to third parties. Apple's suggestion was to launch its new Siri and have a "Trusted System Agent" in place within 18 months. A...

My better half is an artist and maintains a Wix.com site. For the second time in two years, Wix decided to raise the hosting fees. That’s when I suggested to my spouse that I could rebuild the website and host it on Firebase (where I host most of my projects). I assumed this wouldn’t be a big deal (I was wrong) and started researching ways to use a lightweight CMS with Firebase support. Such a system exists — it’s called FireCMS — and it’s excellent. Before I dive deeper, here’s her original site (no longer a paid Wix site):  Miyuki's WIX site Her instructions were clear: replicate it as closely as possible. So I went to work. I created a product development document with use cases, scope, screenshots from the original site, the required features, and of course FireCMS integration. I used ChatGPT to draft the document, then set up a new Firebase instance, and finally launched the Vibe Coding agent (Claude Code). The process wasn’t too different from my other projects, but what sur...